I’d Like to Introduce You to an Old Friend

When I was younger, say junior high, I had a little obsession. This obsession still, remarkably, will float in and out of my dreams, even as a happily-married 26 year old.

Not those kind of dreams, though. Come on, now, get your heads out of the gutter.

These dreams are filled with ridiculous adventures, where I totally kick ass, know things about impossible technology, and travel the globe next to a mop of tousled blonde hair.
Yes, this obsession was with a man…I guess you could call him a boy. I liked to pretend he grew with me as I got older, so that I never had to feel like a pedophile.
A good chunk of my closer friends have probably figured out who I’m talking about by now. For a few years, this dude was my ideal dream-guy…somebody who didn’t think I was weird, thought I was so much cooler than all the popular jerks, and had fabulous Zach Morris hair.
I was in love with Jonny Quest.
I know, I know…he’s a cartoon. But he was just so cool…and going on crazy adventures where there were no popular kids, no Buckle clothing, and no gossip was so much better than living in Elwood, Nebraska. Now, before we get going here, I’d like to clarify that I was in love with this Jonny Quest:

Not this Jonny Quest:

Because that would just be wrong.

Anyway, the point of this freakishly long intro is that Jonny introduced me to a new love, a love much stronger than the bad, shop-vac-esque kisses, 3-hour phone calls, and embroidery-floss-covered class rings I thought meant “love” in high school:

Writing.

One day, while using this fabulous “search engine” thing to find Jonny Quest websites, I stumbled upon something wonderful…something magical…something almost as geeky as playing Dungeons & Dragons…something called fanfiction. I had found a place in which other JQ fans were taking the stories they had in their heads and putting them down on paper (or rather, new-fangled word-processors)…as though they were extending the canceled show into infinite episodes. I was hooked…and after a few hours of reading, decided that the stories in my head were better.

At this time, my bedroom was in the basement, and my dad had built up a wall in the middle, so that Alli (my little sister) and I could each have our own rooms (she wanted green bedding, I wanted maroon bedding…our current arrangement of sharing a room and a queen-sized bed simply could not go on). There were little built-in desks that were perfect for making me feel like an official writer.
I have vivid memories of waking up early before school, scribbling furiously on loose-leaf paper, and letting out loud groans when my parents told me it was time to go to school.

I can’t believe what I’m about to do.

If you Google the words “Lauren Blessing Jonny Quest,” you will find something…something that has managed to live for almost 15 years on the internet without discovery…something I’m about to just offer up to all of you in a link.

Before I do that, however, there are a few things you need to know:

I was in 6th grade when I wrote this…give a girl a break!
If you’re wondering what in the hell is going on when you read this, click here. That should give you a decent rundown…
If you don’t feel like reading that, then just know that “Questworld” is a form of virtual reality and the Quests are using it for time travel.

Yeah, I know. Shut up. Anyway, here it is. Notice that they didn’t even spell my name right. Oh, well.

If you don’t want to read it, that’s totally cool, because really, that’s not the point to this post. The reason I’m divulging my utter geekiness to all of you isn’t to make you think I’m a ridiculous nerd…most likely, that will have happened, but what I really want is to remind myself of something.

I loved writing fiction. I always had dreams of writing a novel and getting it published. That junior high kid would probably look at me and be like, “Hey! What am I doing all this scribbling for? Come ON, future self!”

So I’m going to replant that seed in my brain. I’m probably not going to just leap into writing a giant novel at the moment, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right?